Other People’s Money and it’s what get rich quick schemers tell you to use to do everything from buying real estate to…well really I’m just talking about buying real estate.

I was on vacation at my house/rental property in California and I kept hearing ads on the radio about a real estate investment seminar where the star of a house flipping show will teach me, the listener, how to invest in real estate using other people’s money. “The Palm Springs area is an ideal place” to use these techniques, the voice said.

The funny thing is that when I got back home to my primary residence, I heard the exact same voice of the exact same television star saying that my town in NJ was an ideal place for these techniques.

What this person was really saying is that there are plenty of suckers in Palm Springs and plenty of suckers in NJ. This house flipping is easy and can be taught to anyone drug is the opium being pushed on innocent people who lack some common sense and want an easy way to success.

Real estate can be a great investment, I’ve invested in real estate and now own three properties, but it’s not easy, it’s not short term, and no one is giving you money without a proven track record.

Money can be made flipping houses, I don’t doubt that, as a matter of fact, my nephew has been quite successful doing it, but it’s his full time job and it was something he grew into building from a different but related business. Flipping houses is not something that can be done on weekends or in your spare time.

I know (if anyone actually reads this) that there will be some who say, “but I’ve done it, I flip houses on the weekends, in my spare time and it works.”

My response is if it works so well, why don’t you do it full time? If it’s so lucrative why not quit your 9-5 and get serious about it? The reason is that it probably doesn’t pay as much as you think and when you really do the numbers you’ll see that.

Don’t get sucked up in the it’s easy to make money (especially if you use other people’s money) game. It’s a losers game.